Meet the Scientist

Devin L. McCaslin, PhD

Devin McCaslin interviewed by AAS Member, Samantha Stiepan.

Devin L. McCaslin, PhD, joined the faculty at the Mayo Clinic in 2016. His current research interests include assessment and rehabilitation of pediatric patients with vestibular impairment, the use of vestibular myogenic potentials to diagnose otolith disorders, and balance outcomes in patients with cochlear implants. Dr. McCaslin has authored and co-authored publications that cover the areas of tinnitus, dizziness, auditory function, and outcome measures development. He is also president of the American Balance Society, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, and the author of the textbook Videonystagmography / Electronystagmography.

Mary Pat Moeller, PhD

Mary Pat Moeller interviewed by AAS Student Member, Erin Nelson.

Mary Pat Moeller, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Childhood Deafness at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, NE. Dr. Moeller is currently a co-principal investigator with J. Bruce Tomblin, PhD of an NIDCD-funded multi-site study of the outcomes of children who are hard of hearing. She directed at team at BTNRH in the development of a website for families whose infants refer from newborn hearing screening (www.babyhearing.org; www.audiciondelbebe.org). Dr. Moeller is a member of the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing. Dr. Moeller has published widely and lectured internationally on topics related to early development in children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Michael P. Gorga, PhD

Michael Gorga interviewed by AAS Member, Maureen Shader.

Michael P. Gorga, PhD is the Director of the Human Sensory Physiology Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) in Omaha, Nebraska. He also has courtesy appointments at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dr. Gorga received his BA and MS degrees from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He received his PhD from the University of Iowa under the direction of Paul Abbas, PhD. After the completion of his PhD, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Kresge Hearing Research Laboratory of the South and at BTNRH. Following postdoctoral training, he assumed his current position as Director of the Human Sensory Physiology Laboratory at BTNRH, a position he has held for 34 years. For the first 20-25 years in this position, Dr. Gorga split his time between clinical service and translational research. Approximately 10 years ago, his roles changed, such that essentially all of his time is devoted to translational research and other activities associated with the overall research program at BTNRH, including mentoring of junior scientists, postdoctoral fellows and students.

Starting in the mid-to-late 1980's, Dr. Gorga began a long and productive collaboration with Dr. Stephen T. Neely that continues to this day. The work resulting from this collaboration has been primarily focused on understanding cochlear processes in humans with normal and impaired hearing, relying mainly (but not exclusively) on measurements of otoacoustic emissions. Dr. Gorga's research program has been supported for the past 20 years by an R01 from the NIDCD. In addition to his own grant, Dr. Gorga has been the principal investigator on a core grant (P30), a training grant (T35), and a conference grant (R13), and co-investigator on grants held by others, mainly from the NIDCD. He has authored or co-authored over 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has been involved in the activities of the American Auditory Society for many years, serving on its Executive Board and as its President. He also has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal, Ear and Hearing, for the past 14 years. With his retirement eminent, Dr. Gorga was humbled and honored to be asked to give the 2016 Carhart Memorial Lecture at the Meeting of a Society he has always considered his professional home.

Viji Easwar

Viji Easwar interviewed by AAS Board Member, Robert Burkard.

Viji Easwar is a postdoctoral research fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children (Neurosciences & Mental Health) and is a part of the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience (University of Toronto). She joined the Cochlear Implant lab in 2014 after completing her PhD in hearing science at the National Centre for Audiology at the University of Western Ontario in London Ontario, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Scollie and Dr. David Purcell.

Brent Edwards, PhD

Brent Edwards, Chief Technology Officer at EarLens, is an accomplished executive who most recently served as the Vice President for Research at Starkey Hearing Technologies where he was responsible for developing and executing the organization’s corporate research and patent strategies worldwide. For over 18 years he has lead research teams that have developed innovative signal processing algorithms, fitting procedures, diagnostics and outcome measures, wireless technologies, transducers and other technologies that have benefitted hearing aid wearers and practitioners. Dr. Edwards founded and developed the Starkey Hearing Research Center where he led a team of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers conducting long-term research on hearing impairment and hearing aid technology. Prior to Starkey, he was the head of Research at SoundID and at GN ReSound. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and is a frequent invited speaker at international scientific conferences.

Melanie Ferguson, PhD

Melanie Ferguson is a consultant clinical scientist (audiology) and research lead at the NIHR Nottingham Hearing Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing, UK. The overall aim of her research programme is to seek clinical strategies for overcoming loss of activity limitations and participation restrictions arising from difficulties in hearing. The research focuses developing and evaluating novel intervention strategies for people with hearing loss, which integrate developments in scientific principles of brain plasticity, learning theory, health behaviour change, and a patient-centred approach to improve clinical practice. Dr. Ferguson is also involved in UK professional audiology affairs, particularly higher training for audiologists.

Frederick Gallun, PhD

Frederick Gallun interviewed by AAS Board Member, Rafael Delgado.

Frederick J. Gallun, PhD is a researcher at the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, and Associate Professor in Otolaryngology and the Neuroscience Graduate Program at Oregon Health and Science University. He received his degree in Cognitive Psychology from UC Berkeley and completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University. His laboratory and research collaborations are funded by three NIH grants and three VA Merit Awards. The work focuses on the impacts of aging, hearing loss, and brain injury on the ability to parse the auditory scene, with an emphasis on spatial hearing and the processing of temporal information.